It’s not easy being Green

Seattle City Council candidate Joe Szwaja sent out an email this morning announcing that he has raised $20,121 thus far — $17,091 at his Kick-Off party alone. Considering his late entry into the race against incumbent Jean Godden, I suppose that’s not bad.

The Council is technically non-partisan, though we all know that all of the current council members are at least nominally Democrats. We also all know that Szwaja is a key member of the Washington State Green Party. Which leaves me a bit conflicted about this race.

On the one hand, ideologically, I align myself very closely with much of the Green philosophy. On the other hand, politically, I find both the local and national Green Parties to be misguided, self-destructive, vindictive… and strategically retarded.

On the one hand, while I like Godden personally, I’m having a hard time recalling what, if anything, she’s accomplished during her four years on the City Council. On the other hand, while I came away rather impressed the one time I had the opportunity to speak with Szwaja at length, um… this is apparently the guy who vettedAaronDixon. Doesn’t exactly inspire confidence.

That said, my main criticism of the Greens has always been strategic: their eagerness to play the spoiler in high profile races for US Senate and President, while refusing to do the gritty, hard work necessary to actually build a party. Most of electoral politics is tedious, time consuming and far from glamorous. Sure, it might be more fun for a third party candidate to run for Congress or Senate, than, say, fire commissioner, but barring substantial electoral reforms like proportional representation or ranked-choice voting, such high profile candidacies are at best futile, and at worst, a dangerous distraction from the real candidates.

So I guess I should congratulate Szwaja for finally entering a race he has a snowball’s chance of winning. City Council is not exactly starting at the bottom — which is exactly where the Greens need to start if they’re ever going to build a base — but it is local, it is nominally non-partisan, and it is nominally winnable.

Who knows? Joe Szwaja certainly isn’t guaranteed one of the two top slots in the primary. Nor is Jean Godden. It should be remembered that Godden received only 17.65% of the vote in the September 2003 primary, getting into second place by only 175 votes.

My point is, and I’ve explained it more thoroughly in prior posts, that this is structurally a two-party system. There is virtually no way for a third party to achieve anything but spoiler status under our current system, so if third parties like the Greens are truly serious, they have to work on enacting the kind of structural electoral reforms that give them a shot at being elected.

Personally, I think the Greens would be more effective by organizing as a caucus within the Democratic party. But that’s just me.

Ivan is correct. We elect FAR TOO MANY offices in the United States for either proportional representation or ranked choice voting to work.

They work well in places like Ireland and Australia. In Ireland, you vote in only one race — for the lower house of parliament in your multi-member district. In Australia, you vote in two races — a single member of the national house from your district, and a six member panel of the national senate from your state. In each race, you rank all of the various candidates and/or parties.

This would never work here. Imagine ranking numerous candidates for each of the nine statewide offices, state house, state senate, U.S. house, U.S. senate, all sorts of county offices, city council, school board, port commission, water district, fire district — and don’t forget all those judicial offices.

Just remember that George W. Bush was accidentally elected President because the ballots in several Florida counties were confusing …

What’s wrong with that? Given a choice between Democrat partisans and Republican partisans, I’ll take Roger Rabbit over any Republican partisan you can name. Lord knows, Roger isn’t perfect — Mrs. Rabbit can furnish all the details — but he’s certainly more ethical and warm-hearted than Karl Rove.

@4 “Just remember that George W. Bush was accidentally elected President because the ballots in several Florida counties were confusing … ”

Richard, why should we “remember” something that isn’t true? Bush wasn’t elected. And the (deliberately?) “confusing” ballots were only a small part of a big picture, the main piece of which was the 57,700 non-felon black voters who were purged from Florida’s voter registration rolls. That was a 57,700-count federal felony.

A) Joe Szwaja will be lucky to get 20% of the vote. Remember fellow Democrats, this is the guy who campaigned for Ralph Nader and Aaron Dixon. He did not, as Goldy points out, focus on building the Green Party from the ground up. Instead he was more than happy to try and play the role of spoiler in races in which the Greens had no chance. Much like this one.

B) How does running for a non-partisan seat advance the Green Party’s agenda? Getting Steinbrueck elected didn’t do them much could, as he quickly distanced himself as far as he could from the Greens.

I happen to agree with you about Godden. She is a very nice and decent person.

But her performance on the Council has been…well what can one say about someone who when confronted with unknown and increasing costs for the Tunnel and no clear way to pay for it says that we should plunge ahead because it doesn’t matter what it costs.

It turns out the fake preznit isn’t so popular in Albania after all. What they really want is his watch. Of course, the White House is lying about it — they deny Bush’s watch was stolen right off his wrist. The video says otherwise. http://tinyurl.com/2fqdpy

I’m sure it was a cheap watch, but he shouldn’t have worn it in public anyway. Not in Albania, fer chrissake. That country is so poor they steal paint off walls. That’s where there’s no graffitti there.

I don’t know about Washington State, but in a lot of places Green Party members are following Goldy’s advice — running for dog catcher (and getting elected), then sewer board (and getting elected there, too), then school board, then city council, etc.

I agree that this is the right way to build a small party. I’m not philosophically a Green myself; I just admire this strategy.

Goldy is also right about electoral reform. Here, too, the place to start is local government. Think Pierce County (IRV), Oakland, CA (IRV), Davis, CA (PR) and Minneapolis, MN (IRV plus PR for minor offices). And that was all on a single day last November.

4. Why wouldn’t a primary reduce the number of candidates down to a smaller number so that a PR system could work? Also if you are ranking a list of candidates why wouldn’t there be a winner even if there were 5 or 10 candidates for Congress (say)?

Also I don’t agree with the conventional wisdom that says the best way for a 3rd party to form is from the ground up. For one thing, having a dog catcher who’s for campaign finance reform wouldn’t make any difference. Same for changing the foreign policy of the US. Or reducing the war budget. Also having someone run for national office is a lot more inspiring than getting folks to work for the election of water district officers.

The best thing to do would be to recruit the remaining non- spineless, non-DLC Democrats and any other interested public figures and form a new party around them. That’s what the GOP did when it formed.

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